The National Association of Norwegian Architects (Norske arkitekters landsforbund - NAL) was founded in 1911, and this year marks its centenary. A fully formed national architecture appeared in Norway in the 19th century, but the last hundred years have undoubtedly become defining ones for it: it has gone from a regional phenomenon to an international level. Now the projects of Norwegian architects are widely published in magazines and are shown at exhibitions around the world, and Snohetta is perhaps one of the twenty most famous workshops on the planet.
However, the Jubilee Year program was not about smug summing up and an appeal to glorious history. According to its authors, now architecture, like the world as a whole, is going through a period of rapid changes. Climate warming, population growth and changes in its composition, active urbanization force us to take a fresh look at the role of the architect in society, the tasks facing him, and ways to solve them. But these transformations are not a catastrophe at all, because every architect has a “gene of changes”: this profession itself is based on a person's innate desire for new things, renewal and changes.
Under the motto Room for change ("space for change"), the program of the Year of Architecture was composed of various conferences, open discussions (including with the participation of the general public), workshops, exhibitions (often projects for specific cities or regions), competitions, open days Open House doors in all major cities, a series of guided tours, free architectural advice to the public, film screenings, a special TV program and much more. As a result, Norwegian architects communicated and collaborated with each other and foreign colleagues, with representatives of other creative professions and authorities, with students, schoolchildren and the general public. The Year of Architecture was dedicated to strengthening existing and creating new ties between the architect and society; one of its themes is engagement: a professional should not forget about the people for whom he works, and it is quite possible to awaken the public's interest in architecture. Of course, the opinion of the majority in the creative process should not be decisive, but the participation of “prepared” residents interested in architectural problems in the discussion of the project of a new school or public space is extremely useful.
Examples of community outreach in the Year of Architecture include a national television program
Håkon and Haffner's Building Bricks. The founders of Fantastic Norway, Haakon Osaröd and Erlend Haffner, in an accessible and lively, almost playful way, touched upon the key problems of architecture: comfortable dwelling, buildings-attractions, sleeping areas, urban / public space. Colleagues accused them of oversimplifying the subject, but the show did its part by opening a broad discussion about architecture in society.
The Building Blocks exhibition in Oslo is based on projects commissioned by architects and in collaboration with children aged 8-16. In Tromsø, where they are actively exploring the possibilities of landscape architecture in the Arctic, including on the basis of the world's northernmost botanical garden, a workshop was held for everyone, dedicated to arranging an urban mini-vegetable garden in the harsh climatic conditions (such an experience would be very useful to domestic architects, rejecting many aspects of foreign "greening" due to the allegedly unsuitable climate).
Although the events of the Year of Architecture spanned all months from January to November, it culminated in the Oslo Architecture Festival, and the main event of the festival was Architecture Day on 23 September. As in previous years, NAL celebrated it with a conference with the participation of Norwegian and foreign experts. But this time, in connection with the round date, the conference was devoted to the most important issue today: how architecture responds to new economic, environmental, political and cultural challenges. In the modern world, the very type of architectural discourse is changing, the center of gravity is shifting from the “image” of architecture to its “efficiency” (in the broadest sense of the word). The organizers have divided this problem into three parts: Communication, Exchange and Participation.
The introduction for the Day of Architecture was
report by Knut Olav Åmås, writer, philosopher and cultural editor of the leading Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. He outlined the situation in modern Norwegian architecture, highlighted the main problems. It is important to note that they turned out to be very close to Russian realities, despite all the external differences. Omos believes that now architects should more actively participate in public life, since architecture is a mirror of society, it testifies to its present and future. People, in particular Aftenposten readers, are interested in architecture in terms of ethics and aesthetics, quality of projects, national identity, etc. But they do not always get enough information first-hand: architects are mostly introverts, few of them try to write about their views on the profession and society, and these texts are often difficult for unprepared readers to understand; the lack of speakers sometimes makes the “mouthpiece” of the profession people who are not very deserving or who represent the point of view of only a small fraction of colleagues.
Within the professional community, no one openly criticizes each other: all such discussions take place behind the scenes, as well as the competition for developers who have enormous power: they are the ones who decide what, how and where will be built. Architects rarely try to appeal to society, arrogantly treating the taste and judgment of the public, they are almost invisible in public life - although populism, of course, cannot be the answer.
The plan for the transition to "green" architecture is still being implemented with difficulty: most projects are very backward in the environmental aspect. Small and medium-sized Norwegian cities for full development need new master plans, which are not yet available. The existing housing shortage is being addressed with new, poor quality houses that will soon have to be replaced.
According to Omos, all these problems can be solved by establishing a constructive dialogue with society - for this, architects will have to take on a pedagogical role, explaining their position in a clear and accessible language.
Obviously, all three themes of the Day of Architecture - participation, exchange and communication - are part of both this dialogue and the new "circle of responsibilities" of the architect, so the transition to the main section of the conference turned out to be quite natural. In the Participation sector, America's favorite Teddy Cruz spoke about the importance of citizen participation in solving the most difficult problems, using the example of the twin cities of San Diego and Tijuana, separated by the state border of the United States and Mexico and a wall that prevents the flow of north of illegal immigrants and smuggling. There are American factories in Tijuana, but they have brought nothing to the city other than pollution. The slums are partly built from waste imported from the United States, such as old car tires. In San Diego, outside the gated communities, the same kind of spontaneous settlements are emerging, with nothing but the “creativity of poverty”. For these poorest residents of the United States, legal and illegal, it is necessary to change zoning laws, making the territory programmatically "fragmented" and functionally rich: a single kitchen can be created for several houses, a church can be used as a community center, etc. Some ideas can be brought there by an architect - an intermediary between residents and authorities, but most of the plans will be able to offer the population (in cooperation with architects). In this way, you can "design" the economic and political process of turning immigrants into socially protected US citizens.
Another option for “co-participation” was presented by French architects Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou: their Ecobox modular system allows the creation of urban gardens, home libraries, shared kitchens that can be easily transferred from place to place, “capturing temporarily unused urban space. The architects' initiative is quickly picked up by the residents of the banlieue, a dysfunctional suburb of Paris, and they themselves develop this or that project without the participation of the “initiators” (an architect-initiator engaged in “proactive” projects without a customer is an important aspect of the new architecture).
The Exchange section was opened by the head of Studio Mumbai's Indian bureau, Bijoy Jain, who spoke about the constant exchange of ideas and skills that is going on between him and his fellow artisans - carpenters, masons, carvers with traditional education. This method of work not only allows us to achieve thoroughness in the execution of details, but also brings new things to the design: for example, instead of drawings, the workshop employees constantly make models, often of parts of the future building in full size. As a result, the bureau's interior looks more like a carpenter's workshop than an architect's office: it was his Studio Mumbai that was shown at the last Venice Biennale, where it won the jury's award.
But the real "star" of both this section and the entire conference was Daniel Dendra, well-known to Muscovites for the projects of the Strelka Institute, who spoke about the challenges of our time in terms of the Open Source and Crowd Source methodology. In his opinion, the Internet made knowledge equally accessible to every inhabitant of the planet, remote learning and, accordingly, remote work became possible. An excellent example of this is the Dendra project Open Japan, when architects from China, Russia, Europe, etc. worked for a country affected by the recent earthquake for a 72-hour marathon, passing projects to each other like a baton. Such a broad, democratic and humanistic approach can transform the profession of an architect, says Dendra, since many of the existing methods do not meet modern requirements. Thus, the competition for the design of the new Egyptian Museum in Cairo forced the participating architects to accumulate man-hours equal to the full 40-year career of 10 architects. As a result, one project was chosen, and all the others were useless. At the same time, there is a shortage of architects: only 2% of buildings in the world are built with their participation, "green" technologies are introduced very slowly; the public does not trust architects, and university graduates are often not ready for practical work. The way out is the Exchange 2.0 plan: Knowledge, Resilience, Collaboration, and Foresight.
Craig Dykers, one of the founders of Snohetta, spoke in the Communication section. Communication, he believes, plays a key role in the work of the architect: the final quality of the building speaks more about him (that is, how well all participants in the process managed to agree among themselves), and not about the original idea. But the complexity of many projects lies precisely in communication: for example, the pavilion of the memorial on the site of the former World Trade Center in New York is located above 4 other structures, and its design by the Dykers bureau had to be coordinated with their designers and customers. Discussing their project for the University Library in Toronto with local residents, the Snohatta architects invited them to choose the most interesting and relevant image for the project from a series of pictures on the theme of nature: they turned out to be a photo of a flock of meerkats, which was interpreted as a symbol of unity and cooperation.
The conference lasted all day; speakers also included Volume magazine editor Jeffrey Inaba and other Norwegian and foreign experts; reports alternated with open discussion. Many different ideas were expressed, but the most important thing on Architecture Day was the way it was held. The centenary of the national architectural union was celebrated in Oslo not with a holiday, not with speeches about a sense of pride (although there is something to be proud of), but a serious conversation about the future of the profession. This approach in itself is a reason for pride.
